You know that I would
rather--oh, a hundred times!--wound myself than wound you! You must
listen, then, when I tell you that this girl is not worthy of you; when
I tell you that this note proves it!"
"Read it!" he commanded, in a hoarse voice. "Read it, then!"
"'Lord Vernon will be deeply grateful,'" she read, "'if he is not
mentioned in connection with to-day's adventure.' To-day's
adventure--when he kicked Jax away from her. Can you doubt? Can you be
so stupid as to doubt? These Americans--they have no sense of honour!"
He turned to the window without answering, but his face was drawn and
white.
CHAPTER XVIII
Man's perfidy
To Archibald Rushford, sitting ruminant in his room, staring absently
out at the dunes and the sea, his paper forgotten, there entered
presently Susie--a rather subdued Susie, as he noted from the corner of
his eye--who drew up a chair very close to his and sat down and propped
her chin in her hands and looked up at him.
It came to him in a flash of revelation that, did she have a mother, it
was to her she would have gone at this moment, and not to him, and his
eyes were a little misty as he looked down at her. That she and her
sister should have grown, motherless, to such sweet, triumphant
womanhood struck him in this instant as a kind of miracle--he had never
thought of it before.
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